Political Theatre category archive

It would seem that the TV show Person of Interest, positing a giant surveillance computer tracking us all, is not all that far off the mark. The computer, though, is not called “Sibilance,” it’s called “Stellar Wind”:

From Raw Story:

It is a deeply secret programme, (ex-NSA employee–ed.) Binney says, that is called Stellar Wind. He points to the NSA’s creation of a giant data centre at Bluffdale in Utah as part of the system.

The gigantic building is set to cost $2bn and be up and running by 2013.

It is being designed to store huge amounts of accessible web information – such as social media updates – but also information in the “deep web” behind passwords and other firewalls that keep it away from the public.

As an example of Stellar Wind’s power, Binney believes it is hoovering up virtually every email sent by every American and perhaps a good deal of the people of the rest of the world, too.

“I didn’t expect it from my government. I thought we were the good guys. We wear white hats, right?” he said.

Read the rest.

At the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Reg Henry considers Mitt the Flip’s foray into the birther nonsense. A nugget:

The most fanatical birther holdouts are today’s equivalent of the Japanese soldiers on Pacific islands in 1945 who did not believe World War II had ended and refused to surrender. Similarly, the remnant imperial army of birthers still lurk in the jungle thickets of American misinformation, receiving their instructions via talk radio.

Last month, Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate for president, revived the giddy romance of the birthers’ obsession by making a little joke while visiting his home state of Michigan with his wife Ann. “No one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised.”

That is true. However, it raises another thought: What the American people don’t know is not his birthplace but where some of Mr. Romney’s money was born and raised.

Chauncey Devega has managed to tick off Fox News.

One Pissed Off Veteran sees the kinship:

The American Taliban is hard at work here. The Fundamentalist Radical Christianists are doing everything they possibly can to bring on the Armageddon they want so badly. The sociopathic ruffians behind this project knew that it would create strife among their brothers-under-the-skin, the Fundamentalist Radical Islamists. That, it would appear, was the whole point.

Dick Polman devoted two articles to Mitt the Flip’s foreign affairs chops (as in “chop shops”) this week. Both are worth a close reading.

Here’s a bit from the one on the Libya situation, which expresses Polman’s awe at Mitt’s flipping skills:

I won’t recount in detail the latest Romney misadventure; you probably know it already. Suffice it to say that, in the midst of spiraling violence at our Egyptian and Libyan embassies on Tuesday night Eastern time, Romney rushed out a statement that politicized the tragedy and falsely pinned the blame on President Obama. He said: “It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn the attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”

It takes a special talent to weave multiple lies into a single sentence, all while rushing to judgment in the midst of a fast-moving tragedy, but Romney pulled it off.

And here’s one illustrating that Mitt is still fighting the Cold War (which, in Republican revisionist history, was single-handedly slain by Saint Ronaldus and his magickal microphone over two decades ago):

Yes, Russia can be a pain in the butt, especially in Syria. But President Putin supports the strong western sanctions against Iran (which in turn benefits Israel), and he has aided our war in Afghanistan by allowing the U.S. and NATO to transport military materiel on his rail lines. Moreover, Russia continues to be a major supplier of crude oil to America.

So when you bluster in ignorance at an important semi-ally, and when you then double down by blustering anew in a radio interview (as Romney did earlier this week), you risk screwing things up for the nation you aspire to lead. Here’s how:

NATO, led by America, is engaged in a sensitive minuet with Russia over NATO’s plans for a missile defense shield in Europe. We’ve told Russia repeatedly that the shield is intended to deter Iran, not Russia. But Russia is wary of the project, in part because the most hawkish factions within the government oppose it – suspecting that it’s American trick to put a cap on Russian power.

So here comes Romney, again, pounding away about how Russia is public enemy number one …and guess what: his rhetoric has strengthened Russia’s resolve to oppose the missile shield.

Do you want this man’s finger on the red button?

Via Bartcop.

Would you really trust this man’s finger on the red button?

Bob Cesca sums it up:

That’s the big Romney mistake — and a mistake that most (if not all) Republicans make. They confuse obnoxious loudness with foreign policy expertise.

Helen Philpot assesses the political conventions. I know it’s old news, way back from last week, but the whole post is a riot. Here’s a snippet:

Maybe it’s just me Margaret, but the Republicans have a real problem. Eventually a nun is going to show up and remind them that Jesus actually likes poor people. And I’ll be damned if the Democrats didn’t know that as well.

Mike Papantonio reminisces about his visits to Fox News.

I was planning not to mention 9/11. There is little I can say that I haven’t already said, and I have tired of those who use it to boost ratings or website hits or to support some unrelated and commonly noxious position.

But . . . .

Dick Destiny reminds us, not of the legacy of the victims on that date, but of the travesties committed under cover of their names.

In the Guardian, Michael Paarlberg wonders why teachers and their profession have become objects of scorn, certainly in the eyes of wingnuts.

Then, at a certain point, teachers’ unions woke up to find their favorability rating hovering somewhere between al-Qaida’s and herpes. This didn’t happen overnight, but a confluence of state budget crises, urban blight and suburban flight, a well-funded school reform movement and private charter school industry created the need for a scapegoat for bad public schools. Could it be their financing structure, dependent locally on grossly unequal property tax revenues? Or their unaccountable school boards, such as the one appointed by Rahm Emanuel? Might poverty and unemployment not be to blame? The drug economy? Poor parenting?

No, none of the above. It’s teachers and their pesky insistence that they know how best to educate kids simply because they spend most of the day with them.

I think there is another factor at work, the desire of some persons to force teachers to teach fiction. For example.

Read the rest. Then check out Will Bunch’s take.

Addendum, While Cooking Supper:

Freddie deBoer at Balloon Juice:

In this capitalist system of ours, what people make is a statement about how much society values what they do. Honey Boo Boo Child will make more this year than most Chicago teachers, and our friends in the media think they make too much. That’s all you need to know. If you think that people should be willing to teach for less, than shut your mouth and go apply to teach in Chicago yourself.

Follow the link. Now.

Also, what the hell is a Honey Boo Boo?

On second thought, I don’t want to know.

This is why.

President Barack Obama, Republican challenger Mitt Romney and Virginia’s two U.S. Senate candidates, Democrat Tim Kaine and Republican George Allen, will spend millions of dollars on ads in an effort to influence voters before the Nov. 6 election. But the candidates aren’t the only combatants in the ad wars being waged in this big election season.

There are groups such as Crossroads GPS, a conservative advocacy operation co-founded by Republican strategist Karl Rove that has produced ads skewering Obama and Kaine. And there are “super PACs” such as the pro-Democrat group Majority PAC that has sponsored ads promoting Kaine and attacking Allen.

Independent political and interest groups have bought $37 million worth of television advertising time in the state’s top four media markets, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project. About half of the money has been spent by groups that don’t disclose their donors to the public. And the vast majority of the ads have been negative.

The ads from Karl Rove and the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, in particular, go beyond “slanted” to fantasy. That’s just how they roll.

The Booman explains.

Just two steps beyond Fred Flintstone:

Men have gained at women’s expense by controlling them, making them dependent, making them work, ignoring many of their needs, accumulating two or more women as sex or marital partners, coercing them into sex, and even kidnapping them from their villages, in which case they really are over the next hill. Often in the historical and anthropological record, this last tactic has been a byproduct of xenophobia—you attack the enemy, try to kill the men, and take their women for yourselves.

In fact, the whole of human evolution and history can be seen as the playing out of strategies by which men tried to control uteruses.

Read the rest.

Addendum, Later That Morning:

The prosecution rests.

Jimmy Fallon:

H/T Heather for the link.